SDCC 2017: Requiem for a Lost Fan-Fueled Dream of Comic-Cons Past

Last year’s San Diego Comic-Con was heavily themed on a science fiction series that only lasted three season—Star Trek. In recognition of its 50th anniversary, the Wednesday night special movie screening under the stars was the premiere of the most recent chapter of the reboot: “Star Trek Beyond.”. Panels paid tribute to topics are varied as James T. Kirk, the Enterprise and the science of Star Trek as an inspiration for real science and scientists. This year, Star Trek was back as a new type of TV series, but I can’t help remember another detour into Star Trek history.

In 2014 another Star Trek film premiered: “Prelude to Axanar” as an off-site event of San Diego Comic-Con. I was lucky enough to sit in front of Richard Hatch at the screening. A fan boy tried to get me to move after Hatch sat down. I refused and before we all settled in to see “Prelude to Axanar” I briefly chatted with Hatch who was polite, affable and enthusiastic about the short film and its future.

“Prelude to Axanar” was a high-quality fan film that was supposed to be a teaser and promotion for a longer feature film. Yet while work on the Axanar short began in 2010 and Paramount Pictures, owner of the Star Trek copyright, had not objected during the March Kickstarter campaign. David Gerrold, one of the original writers for “Star Trek: The Original Series” signed on as a creative consultant. No effort seems to have been made to stop the “Prelude to Axanar” screening at Horton Plaza in July of 2014. Yet by Dec. 29, 2015, CBS and Paramount filed a lawsuit about copyright infringement. Instead of going into production, the Axanar film stalled.

If you’ve been out of Star Trek fandom, you might think this was a fairly straight forward case, but CBS and Paramount had allowed fan films to exist for years. On 20 January 2017, Paramount, CBS and the Axanar people had come to an agreement: Two 15-minute movies would be allowed. CBS and Paramount formulated a guideline for fan films.

Richard Hatch was originally slated to play the main character in the Four Years War, Klingon Supreme Warlord Karn the Undying, but at 71, the man who had once played Captain Apollo and then Tom Zarek in “Battlestar Galactica” did die in February of this year. The legal delay didn’t take four years, but it was long enough.

Hatch was reportedly fondly remembered at the Battlestar Galactic reunion panel at SDCC. There had already been a reunion at the June ATX convention. At ATX, the reunion was the ATX Television Festivals main Saturday night event according to Entertainment Weekly. At SDCC, the reunion was a Thursday afternoon event in Ballroom 20, a prelude to the hotter Saturday events. One of those would be the CBS All Access panel for “Star Trek: Discovery.”

Like this:

Related

Published by Jana J. Monji

I've written for the Rafu Shimpo, LA Weekly, LA Times, Examiner.com and, more recently, the Pasadena Weekly and RogerEbert.com. I formerly worked for a dot-com more interested in yodeling than its customers.
View all posts by Jana J. Monji

Archives

Categories

What you missed.

Director/writer Daniel Ferguson starts out “Superpower Dogs” with a breathtaking bird’s eye view of a solitary skier starting a suicidal run down a steep British Columbia mountain to disaster. An avalanche buries him, but luckily for him and the camera, avalanche rescue expert, Henry, drops in to dig him out. Henry is a well-trained dog […]

I’ve never been to a Muslim wedding and by the end of “The Wedding Guest,” you won’t have been either, but the movie might make you think of that Christian wedding trope where the priest/minister asks: “If anyone can show just cause why this couple cannot lawfully be joined together in matrimony, let them speak […]

Just the name of Dev Patel’s new movie, “Hotel Mumbai,” recalls another movie, “Hotel Rwanda.” Both are inspired by true events. The 2004 “Hotel Rwanda” is about the 1994 spring genocide (7 April to 15 July) of Tutsi by the Hutu and the efforts of the manager of Hôtel des Mille Collines, a four-starred 112-room […]

The 1963 movie “Lilies of the Field” was adapted by James Poe from William Edmund Barrett’s 1962 eponymous novel. Starring Sidney Poitier and directed by Ralph Nelson, it won Poitier a Best Actor Oscar–a first for an African American as Best Actor and the second for any acting role (the first being Hattie McDaniel for […]

The “King of the Surf Guitar” died at 81 (16 March 2019) and from his pseudonym you’d suspect he was white European, but Dale whose sound helped formulate the Southern California style was born Richard Anthony Monsour (4 May 1937) in Boston to a Lebanese father and he was well aware of musical Middle Eastern […]

Who better to tell the story of women than women? In it’s second installment, the PBS documentary series “Women, War & Peace” returns for a second series on Monday, March 25 and Tuesday, March 26, 9 to 11 p.m. on PBS (check local listings) with four stories about women involved in conflicts in Northern Ireland, […]

In her 2017 “Naila and the Uprising” (Tuesday, March 26 at 9:00 p.m.), Peabody-winning director Julia Bacha shows the central role Palestinian women played in the First Intifada through the story of Naila Ayesh. The documentary uses 2D animation to illustrate some horrific life experiences including the destruction of an 8-year-old Naila’s house in Ramallah […]

Emmy-winning and Oscar nominated filmmaker Gini Reticker was one of the original directors of the 2011series, “Women, War & Peace” and returns in this second series with “The Trials of Spring” (Monday, March 25 at 10:00 p.m.). This documentary premiered in 2015 at 90 minutes and follows three Egyptian women who fought for justice during […]

Once upon a time in Northern Ireland, there was an all-woman political party, patched together in six weeks, the party one two seats at the peace talks ended The Troubles. “Wave Goodbye to Dinosaurs” is part of the second installment of the PBS documentary series “Women, War & Peace.” “Wave Goodbye to Dinosaurs” is the […]

The Netflix new series, “Losers,” is about sports figures who didn’t quite make it as far as they dreamed. I’ve only watched one of the eight episodes, but found the one about Surya Bonaly, “Judgement,” misleading. The Netflix summary tells me about this 37-minute episode: “Surya Bonaly dazzled figure skating fans with her skill, but […]